[Ari423]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Just because teams have a bunch doesn't mean FIRST will keep them legal I future years. Just look at BaneBots motors...

The key difference, I think, is in competitive advantage. There really is no advantage to using the older controllers, other than not having to buy new ones. Once there are none left for FIRST choice, though, I do expect them to become illegal within a couple of years - there is a "cost" associated with keeping them, including maintaining WPI lib classes for them and increased inspector training, as newer inspectors down the road may not have any prior experience with the old controllers. As it is, teams have now had two years to switch over, possibly even more down the line, so when they do become illegal I don't think there will be too much complaining.

We still primarily use Victor 888s to power our robots. We have a ton of them, they are simple and effective to use, and they rarely break if used properly. We plan on continuing to use them into the future until they all break from misuse or they are made illegal. As far as WPILib classes go, I don't believe there is any difference between controlling a Victor 888 and a Spark or Victor SR. I would even be willing to just use the PWM class and manually set values from 0 to 255 if it meant we wouldn't have to spend a ton of money on new speed controllers.